The Fifth Estate (2013)

You know what they say – you wait for a bus and then two come along at once. After causing a media frenzy in recent years, Julian Assange and his whistleblowing website WikiLeaks have found their way to the big screen this year, twice. Earlier in the year, the documentary 'WikiLeaks: We Steal Secrets' was released to highly positive reviews and a lengthy complaint from Assange himself. Now, we have Bill Condon's dramatic (and according to some, heavily fictionalised) account of the history of the now-infamous website and its founder. Similarly to aforementioned documentary, 'The Fifth Estate' has notably been objected by Assange, who wrote to lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch outlining why he shouldn't take the role or have any part in the film. Despite this, Cumberbatch didn't, instead delivering an excellent and nuanced performance that never feels like an impersonation. On the flipside, Cumberbatch is far-and-away the best thing in the film.

That's not to imply that 'The Fifth Estate' is a bad film by any means, it's just that it's regularly flat and occasionally boring. Many have compared it to David Fincher's 2010 masterpiece 'The Social Network' and the similarities do exist (the foundation of a revolutionary website involving two different people who eventually fall out over said site), but the difference is that this film lacks the spark and most importantly, the compelling dialogue of the latter. When making a film such as this centred on dialogue, it is imperative to make the talk as gripping as possible, but despite trying their best, the conversations here are only sporadically attention-grabbing. Additionally, the sequences set inside the 'cyberspace' feel out-of-place and don't work at all.

The film has good intentions and attempts to raise some interesting questions, as it successfully manages not to show favour to any side of the WikiLeaks argument, even going so as far as questioning the film itself, as we see Cumberbatch's Assange dismissing it in an interview. As well as Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl is very good as Assange's partner Daniel Domscheit-Berg, while David Thewlis is as usual, a pleasure to watch, here playing the best on screen Guardian journalist since Paddy Considine in 'The Bourne Ultimatum'. Overall though, the film is not as good as its star – it's a plodding and unremarkable account of one of the biggest new stories in recent history.

Fmovies: THE FIFTH ESTATE is just about what one would expect in this, The Disinformation Age: Truthcrime. As Glenn Greenwald has put it, there is NO PLACE TO HIDE; with Manning in prison and Assange holed up in an embassy, with Snowden an exile and Aaron Swartz dead, with the FCC about to make Internet Neutrality a thing of the past and the NSA laying claim to the mantle the Stasi abdicated, there is Truly NO PLACE TO HIDE. Truthcrime is the villification of one who tells the Truth- and the criminalization of Truth itself. As the Assange character in the movie puts it, "Whoever thought that we'd need extra servers to fight censorship attacks from the bastion of free speech?" The fostering of Fear is paramount in any Fascist society, and it was Hillary Clinton herself who said, "We recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it." Wikileaks brought us as a nation face to face with our own hypocrisy and to this day fugitives who should be hailed as heroes are demonized by the Corporate Media. There's a lot of talk of hypothetical harm that's been done to the American $urveillance $tate by whistleblowers, but a movie like THE FIFTH ESTATE , with its collateral characters and laughably overblown imagery, is simply disingenuous and does more real Harm than Good.

I know I'm in the minority, but I liked "The Fifth Estate." Others will agree with me, though, that the best thing about it is Benedict Cumberbatch, who does brilliant job as Julian Assange.

I come at this film from a slightly different point of view because I still don't know what was so fabulous about "The Social Network." I understand the comparisons due to the similar stories. People seemed to find "The Social Network" incredibly compelling, but I guess it's a generational thing - I just didn't.

I attended this film with a friend who had only a vague knowledge of Wikileaks, and he absolutely loved it and found the "redaction" scenes toward the end of the film tense and suspenseful, as I did.

I realize that some of the film may be fictional, and that Wikileaks is a controversial subject. I can't pretend to know the truth. Cumberbatch portrays Assange as an egomaniacal, protective, arrogant man who refuses to compromise, even when information may hurt people. His right hand, Daniel (Daniel Bruhl) begins to see that Assange's dictatorial attitude and paranoia has gone too far and is actually in the long run going to hurt what could have been an important organization.

What should we know, and when should we know it? Assange wants to release unedited documents onto the World Wide Web. Yet in the beginning of the film, he wants at all costs to protect sources. He seems to forget that later on. That's all in the film, based on two books that we're told are biased.

Still, The Fifth Estate raises some interesting questions and also talks about the challenges we face now with news going out onto the Internet. I think some transparency is healthy; I don't think banks should help customers cheat the U.S. out of $30 billion in taxes; but I don't believe military strategy should be leaked, and I believe that sources should be protected. It seems like so much of what we hear today, from politicians and celebrities and publicists is "spin." And most of us are aware that there's more than they're telling us.

As far as the acting, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci are marvelous in small roles; Cumberbatch gets excellent support from Bruhl, Alicia Vikander, Jamie Blackley, and the rest of the cast.

In short, Cumberbatch's performance should be seen and appreciated. I think this film has gotten a bad rap. It's certainly not an awful film.

The Fifth Estate fmovies. I'll just leave to Wikileaks's response the task of identifying all the gross factual mistakes done by the movie (just search for 'wikileaks internal memo fifth estate').

This film is a joke, the objective of tarnishing Assange's image is obvious from beginning to end. It keeps portraying him as a paranoid, egoist, narcissist, sexual maniac, manipulative person, that has no principles whatsoever. Sometimes it even shows him as having some ideals, as a lapse, and then he comes back to his psychopath persona. Really, with so many factual blunders, there's nothing to comment except that it's a poorly written fairy tale.

If you have any interest in this topic, I'd rather spend my time and money on the 'Mediastan' documentary.

The Fifth Estate

Plot In his quest to make information free for everyone whistle blower Julian Assange takes on the kingpins of the world by raging a sophisticated ,new age war that threatens to shake the foundations of diplomacy and overthrow established regimes .It tells the story behind the rise and fall of wiki leaks and of its creator ;Julian Assange who some people call a visionary and some a threat to national security .The story revolves around the complex character of Assange and explores his relationship with Daniel Berg ,one of the spokespersons for Wikileaks.

Script The Fifth estate is loosely based on the book "Inside WikiLeaks" by Daniel berg and uses real life examples as key points to narrate the story. The script is to the point, taut and close to reality but it never becomes more than that. It feels like a monotonous narration of the book with no elements of a thriller that it promised to be. If the makers wanted a boring narration of the events that are already available online why did make all the efforts to make a movie and waste a talent like Mr Cumberbatch?

The script is written to explore the association of Assange and Berg but fails to do so and only creates a one dimensional sketch of a Multidimensional relationship. Other parts of the movie are outwardly boring and dimensionless which makes it a Prime time News at max when the viewers expected a thrilling and insightful leak into the life of one of the most Controversial public figures of the 21st Century.

Direction Its Difficult to understand why Bill Condon was chosen as a director for such a controversial public figure (Mr Condon is the director of Twilight :Breaking Dawn 1 and 2, Now you get it ,right?).His lack of control of the story and the essence of Julian Assange's character is visible throughout the 128 minutes , his lack of understanding of the character is the prime reason why this movie fails to hit the right chords.

Performances Benedict Cumberbatch is the reason why you should watch this movie is watchable throughout its runtime.The expression, body language ,non- verbal cues are exactly like Julian Assanges.

Though Assange refused to meet when benedict requested him so that he could understand him better ,citing faults in the script which he disapproved, still he managed to bring such a complex character to life on screen with panache .He is one of the most exemplary actors of this modern world of cinema.

Final Word The only reason why you may want to watch the movie is Benedict Cumberbatch. Except for him the movie is a dull replay of events we already know off, this isn't the movie that Julian Assange deserves. If You are interested to know about Mr Assange I suggest you watch "We Steal Secrets" by Alex Gibney, that is at least honest in delivering what it promises.

I tend not to read reviews until after I've watched a film lest they sway my opinion, but it wasn't hard to miss the nonchalance (that veers towards damnation) with which The Fifth Estate has been received. Nor that it plays just once per day, at 9pm, at my local Cineworld compared to five screenings per day for Captain Phillips, eight for Ender's Game and fourteen for Thor: The Dark World.

But Bill Condon's (Gods and Monsters, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn) film about Wikileaks founder and hero/pariah (delete according to your political stance) Julian Assange really isn't that bad. Take that as you will.

Not really a biopic, The Fifth Estate takes a similar approach to Assange as The Social Network did with Mark Zuckerberg, looking more at the product of the man than the man himself. It consumes 8 minutes more of your time than The Social Network, feels twice as long, is far more arduous and will require just a single viewing, compared to repeat visits for the Facebook flick.

Trudging through the meeting of the ultimate whistleblower Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Daniel Berg (Daniel Brühl), the explosion of Wikileaks in the public's perception, the shadowy deals with The Guardian and the fall out from countless exposés about underhand dealings from governments and corporations, The Fifth Estate spews out a huge amount of information but never quite manages to get down to the gritty truth.

It feels cluttered and more of a lecture than a movie and I'm not sure I know a great deal more about Assange now than I did yesterday. Too much has been shoehorned into its 128 minute running time but it still only glances over some of the highest profile matters surrounding Assange: the Bradley/Chelsea Manning revelations and the sexual misconduct allegation against Assange that have led to his exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Cumberbatch succeeds admirably in portraying Assange as an obsessive with a serious case of egotism and a lack of social graces or personal care. It's a fine performance and will be a revelation to those who know Cumberbatch only from BBC's Sherlock or Star Trek Into Darkness. He is eminently watchable and succeeds in making an unpleasant man fascinating to watch. Assange wrote an open letter to Cumberbatch hoping to dissuade him from portraying him on film in The Fifth Estate, a "wretched" film, a work of fiction "based on a deceitful book", and one imagines that, should a copy of the film reach him inside his 'prison' he'll be dismayed by the way he is portrayed. Perhaps he'll be magnanimous to concede that, nevertheless, it is a fine performance from Cumberbatch.

Many of the other prominent actors don't fare quite as well. Brühl follows up his superb performance in Rush with a more downbeat character that he never really sinks his teeth into. Like Brühl, Alicia Vikander, Berg's love interest and just one of many thorns in Assange's side, has little to play with and her performance is smothered by the presence of Assange.

Bucking the trend, David Thewlis gives a pastiche of a Guardian journalist, more given to flouncing noisily into meetings and huffing in exasperation than acting. But Thewlis' performance is evened out by able turns from the new Doctor Who, Peter Capaldi, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci, though with so many characters vying for screen time and Condon battling to squeeze in as much information as possible alongside some outdated 80s tech